interdisciplinary
Americanadjective
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combining or involving two or more academic disciplines or fields of study.
The economics and history departments are offering an interdisciplinary seminar on Asia.
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combining or involving two or more professions, technologies, departments, or the like, as in business or industry.
adjective
Etymology
Origin of interdisciplinary
First recorded in 1935–40; inter- ( def. ) + disciplinary ( def. )
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How does interdisciplinary compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Something that's interdisciplinary covers more than one field of study. If you take an interdisciplinary science and literature class, you might read a science fiction novel and then explore the scientific ideas behind it. The word interdisciplinary can be broken into its parts: inter-, which means "between" in Latin, and disciplinary, which is from the Latin disciplina and means teaching or knowledge. Interdisciplinary means between fields, but they don't have to be unrelated disciplines. You can do interdisciplinary work between two sciences, for example. An interdisciplinary conference on biology and computer science might include workshops on both fields.
Vocabulary lists containing interdisciplinary
Words with 15 or More Letters, List 5
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Warrior Girl Unearthed
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Drama High
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A 2025 systematic review also found that tourism and healthy aging is becoming an important interdisciplinary research area, but remains underexplored and in need of stronger methods and clearer future research directions.
From Science Daily • May 4, 2026
As a former editor of the Journal of American Studies, Mr. Sewell is part of an interdisciplinary field that tends to use culture rather than the mechanics of power as its primary lens.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 15, 2026
Missing is a broader and more interdisciplinary account of desire, as well as stronger assertions about what it means to question our received realities.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 8, 2026
I am part of an interdisciplinary team of computer science, AI, cybersecurity, psychology, social science, journalism and policy researchers who have sounded the alarm about the threat of malicious AI swarms.
From Salon • Feb. 15, 2026
Lawrence, perfecting his style of Big Science, already was involved less in performing experiments than in managing his interdisciplinary staff.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
